Wheeling Island as seen from Ohio. Visible from front to rear are the former trolley bridge (demolished just a few years ago), the Aetnaville bridge (still existing, and which also carried trolley cars), and the Wheeling Terminal (PRR-W&LE) bridge way up the river (demolished around 2000 or 2001 if my memory is right):

The item of note in this photo is the Wheeling Terminal bridge (PRR-W&LE) in the background. This is on the end of the island in the river, looking north. PRR is on the West Virginia bank at the right, along with an interurban, and PRR and B&O are on the Ohio side at the left as well.

So much has changed! This is looking up Wheeling Creek from near the present site of Ohio Valley General Hospital. At the right, the railroad line is the Wheeling Terminal, serving a small steel works. In the center is Big Wheeling Creek. On the other bank, passing what looks to be a long gone tile kiln, would be what was or what would become the Baltimore & Ohio line from Pittsburgh. Of particular note is the roundhouse at lower left (W&LE?), with a turntable that looks a little precarious! For some reason the stone arched bridge that's still there isn't visible, which has me wondering about the date of this photo.

Sorry about the small sizes. . .this is what I could get. Both date to late in the station's life.The captions suggest as late as 1970, but I'm inclined to think both date a bit before then, though not by much.

From the American Rails site. . .caption says this is from a special from Washington in the 1960s, but I'm not sure. It would have been unusual to see three units on a passenger train late in the regular service era:

Baltimore & Ohio passenger GP9's, led by #6602, have arrived from Washington, D.C. with a passenger special at the large station in Wheeling, West Virginia on May 12, 1963. Today, the grand station remains but all tracks and facilities are gone.

Banging around on the internet turned up this page from a Rails With Trails site. . .map information for Wheeling, W.Va.

Of particular note is the R. L. Polk map of the city, which can be blown up considerably--and which shows much of the street railway system.

And interesting note about that system, by the way, is that prior to 1938, there were two systems there--on standard gauge, and the larger one Pennsylvania broad gauge. The two shared a fair amount of dual gauge track in the downtown area.

Mentioned in another post about a restored Wheeling car in New England, and worth repeating here. . .

One of the interesting bits of the Wheeling street railway system was a triple crossing of two Pennsylvania spurs crossing each other to reach adjacent factory buildings--this crossing was in the middle of the street between the railroad and the buildings--and a broad gauge trolley line running through the middle of this crossing! The effect was something like this:

--X--

....the X representing the two Pennsy spurs, and the dashes the trolley line. This was there for decades after the rest of the trolley line had been pulled from that street, and wasn't removed until the Pennsy line went away; no doubt this would have been an expensive piece of special work to replace just for some spurs.

Sadly, this and too many other things, both rail related and not, are all gone, all of them either replaced with dull, ugly stuff or simply just parking lots or weeds.

J3a-614

Post subject: Re: Flood Photo from Wheeling, W.Va., ca. 1907

Posted: Mon May 22, 2017 5:11 pm

Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2010 3:41 amPosts: 3432Location: Inwood, W.Va.

Something else to add. . .a page on model railroading, but with more Wheeling photos and maps, too.

This just turned up today. . .a whole series of photographs, looking like a record of some sort, courtesy of the Ohio County Public Library; the institution thinks this series dates from the 1940s, though some of the automobiles suggest the early to mid 1950s.

11th Street and Water Street; the station is just out of sight to the left. Main Street crosses at the top of the incline.

General view of the station, looking roughly northeast; also visible is the rear of Leeds Furniture, my first employer after college. Sadly it's gone now, nothing left at all, even the building is gone.

Although posted elsewhere as a new thread, it seems appropriate to add this here as part of a general Wheeling, W.Va. file.

This turned up on a Facebook page dedicated to modelling the era before the Depression of 1929. It's an internet article, plus an old newspaper article and a slide show of a 1913 B&O exhibition at Hempfield Yard (small yard in downtown Wheeling, near the B&O station,then very new) and the site of the Ohio County Public Library today.

Also, it's interesting how the B&O borrowed a lot of other vintage equipment, such as the Cumberland Valley' Pioneer (on display today in the Smithsonian), and also the Pioneer from the Chicago & North Western. Also there was the Mississippi (once on display in Chicago, now in private ownership.

As to the Dragon, that looks like it might have been the 0-8-0 in the B&O museum today, the machine known for a long time as the Memnon.

And how many of us would also like to see a new EE-class (0-8-8-0) Mallet on display?

J3a-614

Post subject: Re: Flood Photo from Wheeling, W.Va., ca. 1907

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2018 2:47 am

Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2010 3:41 amPosts: 3432Location: Inwood, W.Va.

Another flood photo involving a Pennsylvania Railroad depot, in this case across the river from Wheeling, in Bellaire, Oh. This station was also shared with the narrow gauge Ohio River & Western:

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